The mark of a good villain is how he knows to stop monologuing before he gives away too much of his plan. That’s also the mark of a good superhero-franchise director.

Details on Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (due March 25, 2016) have been scarcer than kryptonite. We know that a cameo by Aquaman sets up 2017’s Justice League and that Wonder Woman has a sizable role. And now we have our first glimpse of Jesse Eisenberg as one of comics’ greatest bad guys: Lex Luthor.

“He’s not any of the Lexes that you’ve seen, that’s for sure,” says Snyder, “other than him being a captain of industry and one person to the world and another person to himself. And bald, of course.”

Eisenberg might not be the first person you’d think of to play the supervillain, but he did have experience portraying a morally challenged billionaire in The Social Network. And this edition of the follicularly challenged megalomaniac taps into a similar hyperintelligence mixed with malignant straight shooting. “Our Lex is disarming and he’s not fake,” says Snyder. “He says what he believes and he says what’s on his mind. If you can unravel the string and decipher what he means, it’s all there.”

Now excuse us while we try to unravel that string and decipher what Snyder is secretly trying to tell us.

Clay Enos

In a related video, learn more about Eisenberg and the evolution of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: